Dr Anne McCall Details Collaboration Between Xavier University and Takeda

As part of an extensive effort to reduce care disparities, Takeda and Xavier University of Louisiana recently announced a partnership that will see the pharma giant make a $3 million investment to grow the university’s already formidable health equity efforts.

The American Journal of Managed Care® spoke with Anne McCall, PhD, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Xavier, located in New Orleans. McCall discussed the 4 principal areas that the grant will support and how this funding will work to further the university’s current partnership with Ochsner Health.

Transcript

Can you discuss how the partnership between Xavier and Takeda came about?

We are fortunate to have Lauren Powell as an alum, who has just been instrumental in getting our university in contact with Takeda, and relationships started to fly. They have lots of work that they’ve done in HIV, as well as in equity and inclusion and social justice all around, and it was just a natural fit. They started meeting people on our campus, we started meeting them, and like good relationships, we started to find areas where maybe we could work together in a mutually beneficial way, really to move the needle on health equity.

From your perspective, what will this partnership look like on a day-to-day basis?

The relationship is going to evolve, we know that. With our very good partners, we start with one thing and then depending on how it goes, it grows in different ways. Takeda has already made gifts to the university in areas that are not this most recent grant, and so this most recent grant, this health equity grant, is just a game-changer for us. It’s $3 million over 3 years and it’s investing in 4 primary areas that they see as being areas that are likely to really create a lift in health equity, in ways that they care about and that we care about at the same time.

Our partnership involves, for this particular grant, they’re funding us. So we’re going to be in contact with them regularly on how that funding is going, what is occurring because of it, and then what we might do together through it. But it’s really meant to make our efforts more robust because of the additional funding.

The partnership has 4 parts to it. The first part is what we call T-REX, which is technical research and exchange center. This is a data health informatics hub that will be on our campus. We have been growing in the administrative side of pharmacy for quite some time. We have a public health/health equity program, and we’re starting health informatics in the fall at the masters level. And for all of these programs, we’re seeking to use data more effectively to achieve practical improvements in people’s health. So to do that, we need to use big datasets—some of those cost money—and we need a specialist who can help our faculty become more proficient in using them and to actually help run some of that center. So that’s the first part.

The second part is really trying to improve the participation in clinical studies on the part of underrepresented minorities. This is an area in which Xavier has traditionally been really helpful in many ways for our country. Takeda obviously wants greater participation in clinical studies, too. So, it’s not doing clinical studies so much on our on our campus so much as educating students and health care professionals about clinical studies. We have credibility in our communities. Pharmacists, in particular—the other areas where we’re growing, as well—pharmacist, in particular, are really credible kind of translators of needs for clinical studies, with our neighborhood population, our student population, our community broadly. So that’s the second area.

The third is funding postdoc researchers and graduate fellowships. As you’re probably well aware, it’s really hard to make a big difference without a robust team, and we’re a small university. And so, adding postdocs who can support our faculty members while they’re doing this work will make the effectiveness of the of the work that much greater, the impact occur much sooner. Similarly, we’ve started a series of graduate programs over the past few years, and our students who are, in majority, underrepresented minorities, and in particular African Americans, would benefit greatly from fellowship funding that we don’t have.

In the past 5 years, we’ve added a masters in public health/health equity—so not every area of public health but an area in which we have high credibility and a record of success—a masters in speech pathology, [and a] masters in physician assistant—we’re graduating our first class. And we’re looking at other programs, in particular genetic counselling and physical therapy. These programs, most of them were doing in connection with Ochsner Health as our clinical partner, and they’ve just been a wonderful partner to us in every way possible.

How will the partnership complement your existing relationship with Ochsner Health?

Their specialists are meeting with our specialists. All of these areas are areas in which, once again, we can have more impact if we have more financial support for it. And then last but not least, community engagement and health advocacy. I have to say that’s the area that right now is the broadest, but I see a lot of opportunity there.

One of our biggest developments over the past few years has been the Ochsner-Xavier Institute for Health Equity and Research. We started this 1.5 years ago with Ochsner, and we are active in 5 areas and each area has Xavier lead and an Ochsner lead.

One of the main purposes of this connection is to help us move from 49th or 50th in health outcomes in the country to 40th by 2030. That leaves a lot of air above us; if we could do better, that would be great. But when you’re last or second to last on a regular basis, you need to do a lot more, and as part of that, Ochsner has committed to starting 12 health clinics in health deserts. That will be one of the main paths through which will engage in even more community health and health advocacy than we do now.